I will be participating in Cleveland West Art League's Six in Studio Program, with the Reveal Exhibition on April 20, 2018 from 5pm-10pm. Swing on by and see the most recent expansion into Jungian Shadow Surrealism!

Settling into having an online gallery - and finally making some much-needed updates, as well as changing the standard font to one of my choosing. Oh yeah! And the site is now JackEGibby.Gallery - Enjoy!

After much hemming and hawing, I have finally put together a website to display my artwork. At the moment this website is in it's Beta stage. I am currently trying to collect images of paintings not currently featured on the website. If you have a painting by me, and you don't happen to see it here on the website, or you see an earlier version (or low quality image) of one of my paintings, feel free to send me images at:

JonathanEdwardGibby@gmail.com

Thank you for taking a look around, I hope you enjoyed what I have posted so far!

Tyrants know there is in the work of art an emancipatory force, which is mysterious only to those who do not revere it. Every great work makes the human face more admirable and richer, and this is the whole secret. And thousands of concentration camps and barred cells are not enough to hide this staggering testimony of dignity. This is why it is not true that culture can be, even temporarily, suspended in order to make way for a new culture. Man's unbroken testimony as to his suffering and his nobility cannot be suspended; the act of breathing cannot be suspended. There is no culture without legacy, and we cannot and must not reject anything of ours, the legacy of the West [nor the East in my opinion]. Whatever the works of the future may be, they will bear the same secret, made up of the courage and the freedom, nourished by the daring of thousands of artists of all times and of all nations. Yes, when modern tyranny shows us that, even when confined to his calling, the artist is a public enemy, it is right. But in this way tyranny pays its respects, through the artist, to an image of man that nothing has ever been able to crush. [***] Some will say that this hope lies in a nation; others, in a man. I believe rather that it is awakened, revived, nourished by millions of solitary individuals whose deeds and works every day negate frontiers and the crudest implications of history. As a result, there shines forth fleetingly the ever threatened truth that each and every man, on the foundation of his own sufferings and joys, builds for all.

The aim of Art, and the aim of life can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, be to reduce or suppress that freedom, even temporarily. There are works of art that tend to make man conform and convert to some external rule. Others tend to expose him to whatever is worst in him, to terror and to hatred. Such works are valueless to me. No Great Work has ever been based on hatred or contempt. On the contrary, there is not a single “True work of Art” that has not in the end added to the inner freedom of each person who has known and loved it. Yes, that is the freedom I am extolling, and it helps me through life. An artist may make a success or failure of his life. But if he can tell himself, finally, as a result of his long effort, he has eased or decreased the various forms of bondage weighing upon men, then in a sense he is justified and, to some extent, he can forgive himself.